


aim & extend

by curiouslyfic



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Madripoor, exit strategies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-20
Updated: 2014-09-20
Packaged: 2018-02-18 03:43:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2333999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/curiouslyfic/pseuds/curiouslyfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Truth be told, Clint’s always figured he’d go out with a burn notice, get himself all the wrong sorts of attention and land himself in more trouble than he can handle. He doesn’t worry about it or anything, not really, just accepts it as an eventuality. An inevitability, really; guy lives his life the way Clint’s been living his, guy runs out of second chances at some point.</p><p> </p><p>Nat’s a little more focused about it, which is to say that Nat’s got plans.</p>
            </blockquote>





	aim & extend

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



Truth be told, Clint’s always figured he’d go out with a burn notice, get himself all the wrong sorts of attention and land himself in more trouble than he can handle. He doesn’t worry about it or anything, not really, just accepts it as an eventuality. An inevitability, really; guy lives his life the way Clint’s been living his, guy runs out of second chances at some point.

  
Nat’s a little more focused about it, which is to say that Nat’s got plans. At some point, she’s determined she’s going to survive the job and while ordinarily Clint would be skeptical, he thinks there’s a decent shot she’ll do it.

So on some level, the real difference between them is that Natasha’s got an _exit strategy_ and some kind of bucket list and Clint’s not much of a forward thinker. Not about that shit, anyway. Sure, he’s got ways and means to lay low for a while, get clear of SHIELD fast and out of the hot seat if it comes to that, but that’s only ever just been temporary, a cabin in Canada Coulson’ll find in an hour. It’s not a way out, though, and it wasn’t meant to be.

When she pushes hard enough, he makes half-assed noises about going underground, falling back on whatever skills he’s still got. What he doesn’t say is that as long as he’s got the ability to do all the shit he does now, he has no intention of going anywhere.

Not permanently, anyway.

“That’s your plan,” she says, voice as flat as her disbelief. “You’re going to take up some sort of criminal enterprise? Or do you actually mean you believe you’ll go mercenary?”

Yeah, no one who knows him thinks that’s happening. “I could get by on the kindness of strangers,” he suggests, wishes he could pull off a decent Southern Belle parody. “Rely on my sterling wits and my winning personality?”

If anything, she’s actually gone flatter, getting annoyed he won’t be serious when she so clearly is. “You’re not that charming.”

And maybe it’s the fact that they’re career planning while he’s bleeding out in some fucking pit in Madripoor, maybe it’s that their ride’s five hours late so far, maybe it’s just the fact that they’ve been partners long enough that he is pretty sure she’s not going to kill him for laughing at her, but for whatever reason, that’s what has Clint snorting helplessly, laughter he can’t stop.

She looks a little murderous. He considers it progress that it’s only _a little_. He waves a warding hand, presses it vaguely like that might hold her off. “Look, I get where you’re coming from, really I do, but I’m not really there yet, you know? Retirement planning, man, that’s a thing that happens to other people.”

Her eyes narrow. Six months ago, that look would have had him drawing on her; now it keeps him quiet. She says something low and rough in Russian, looks away from him in what he’s going to call disgust. He’s going to blame the bleeding head wound for how long it takes him to figure out she’s scanning exits, still running surveillance. She flicks a glance back at him, goes right back to her surveillance, more annoyed Russian, this time with less cursing. “ _After this_ , I said,” she explains, reluctant as hell. “Not _retirement_. What is your plan for — “ more Russian — “after your SHIELD.”

Clint actually cannot imagine any part of that. Retirement is some rainbows-and-unicorns fantasy, retirement is just straight up not happening for him and he knows it, but that after SHIELD business is just as impossible. He can count all the good shit in his life on one hand, he thinks, and all of it comes from SHIELD.

He decides he’ll blame the bleeding head wound for the way that thought makes him feel, opts for pretending he can’t parse the words right now.

Natasha merely sighs, long-suffering in a way that’ll be funny later when he’s got a little distance between himself and this conversation. Then she gives him the location of a hostel in Johannesburg and the sort of vague directions that won’t make sense until he’s there.

It _is_ actually the head wound’s fault it takes him too long to understand she’s just pulled him into her plans.

.

 

“So why Johannesburg?” he asks a few months later, while he’s trying to assess her coherence at Medical’s request. Who knows what the assholes who had her gave her to try to make her talk — probably too much of everything, given how thoroughly they’ve worked her over — but Clint straight refuses to lose his favourite partner like this and if there’s ever a time she should be thinking about getting out of this life, this is probably it.

Even doped off her ass and beat to shit, she still manages to look vaguely murderous with annoyance. The fact that she’s glaring one-eyed because her captors left the other one swollen shut doesn’t even factor in; Clint honestly aspires to be that badass someday. Finally she relents, manages “Get to Wakanda” with enough effort that Clint makes mental notes for medical.

And really, what does it say about them that even fucked up like she is, intermittently drooling and drugged near beyond speech, she’s still outthinking him so easily?

There’s only a handful of places on the planet SHIELD can’t actively monitor 24/7, fewer still with any sort of quality of life. There’s the island slum of Madripoor, all thug crime and casinos for the Starks of the world; and there’s Latvaria, joyless sinkhole of the Eastern bloc; and there’s Wakanda, only African nation to routinely out-alpha the West. If she means to drop off SHIELD’s radar at some point, Wakanda’s probably the only place to do it.

And if he spends most of the rest of that medical evac flight running the logistics of laying low in Wakanda and holding her limp, clammy hand, well, what can it hurt?

He still can’t imagine ever needing it, not like she talks about, but if he ever did, he thinks Wakanda’d be the way to go.

.

It’s, you know, not the _first_ thing he thinks about after Loki but it does definitely come up.

“Wakanda’s been compromised,” Natasha says, very seriously, and yeah, yeah it has. He’s had an alien deity supervillain in his head for days, everything in Clint’s whole damned life is compromised now, all Clint’s secrets have to change.

“So. Thoughts?” Clint winces at what occurs to him. “Aw, crap, Latvaria?” Other than its homicidal, megalomaniacal despot and its apparent universal poverty, Latvaria’s probably okay. Granted, those are two huge fucking issues, but relative to the complete, end-to-end clusterfuck of Madripoor, it’s tolerable. Ish.

She just stares at him, makes that soft click at the back of her throat he’s learned to read as a silent acknowledgement Clint’s a trial. By now, Clint knows enough Russian that once she gets started on it, he’s clear Latvaria is very much off the table.

And when Nat says, “Give me two days to make arrangements,” with grim resolve, all Clint can do is nod. He can finally imagine leaving SHIELD at some point without dying for the privilege but by the time he goes that road, he figures he’ll have too much damage to ever really leave the job behind him.

.

Ironically — or is it, Alanis? — he’s actually in fucking Madripoor when shit goes down. One minute he’s playing idiot tourist in an attempt to fly home, the next he’s in some little room with a “customs agent” who looks entirely too happy to see him.

“Ah, Mr. Barton,” the beady-eyed little shit sneers, with a carrion smile for good measure, and Clint says

“Pretty sure my passport says I’m Oliver Queen,” because Clint has no sense of self preservation, fuck, and that just makes his customs agent happier.

“So it does.” He waits a beat, probably so that sinks in. Clint knows a half-assed sadist when he sees one. “I understand you Americans expect to receive one phone call when you’ve found yourselves on the wrong side of the authorities. Believe me when I tell you that while we do not share this custom, I am willing to make an exception in your case. Just this once. Assuming, of course, that you can find somebody to call.”

Which is pretty much how Clint finds out SHIELD’s officially been disbanded. If nothing else, it makes the recent uptick in undue attention on him understandable, explains the itch between his shoulder blades to get his shit together and get out early.

.

As interrogators go, his “customs agent” is pretty lacklustre. Not really sadistic enough to rank well on intimidation or creativity, definitely not experienced enough to force Clint into anything, just generally subpar for an agent with Clint’s skill set.

Natasha could put this guy down single-handed, probably with a _look_. Hell, once Clint’s not mining the line of questioning and occasional rants for additional intel, he’ll put the guy down himself.

Still, Clint’s in no immediate danger — getting out of Madripoor the hard way isn’t exactly new — and he’s got a lot to think about before he throws himself headlong back into the world; if SHIELD doesn’t exist anymore _and_ they’ve been growing Neo-Nazis potentially all through the organization, Clint has to assume the entire SHIELD supply line’s tainted. No safe houses, no local operatives, no decent drop sites or stashes to get him by.

Hell, Clint can’t even count on finding a band-aid if he needs one, let alone anything that might get him back to the U.S.

Going through with Nat’s plan doesn’t seem so hard to imagine for himself anymore, he’s just not sure that’s the one that applies.

There’s a beach in Bali he’s supposed to find if it’s a long-term exit and a cabin in Canada he’s supposed to use for more temporary withdrawals, a fancy hotel in Paris if he’s not sure and that hostel in Johannesburg if his other option falls through. Much as this situation looks permanent, what with SHIELD declared a terrorist group and Nick Fury apparently assassinated — fucking chest shot, apparently, Clint might really die of irony here — Clint finds himself stalled with indecision.

Sure, he could pick any one of those and barrel ahead, figure out the details later, maybe come up with some sort of bucket list for himself, but picking the one Natasha’s going to go to first? That feels impossible. So does the thought of waiting several weeks or more to find out whether she’s made it out alive.

So truth be told, Clint spends more of the slap-and-threaten interrogation shitshow trying to figure out what sort of exit strategy’s in play than he does actually paying attention to his interrogator, which is how it takes him so long to figure out the guy’s repeating himself. So no new intel, then, which means there’s no point in Clint being here anymore, time to hit up the first fishing trawler out.

The worst part of leaving Madripoor the hard way is always, _always_ the goddamned fishing trawlers.

.

The next 36 hours are going to _suck_ , and not just for the smell.

.

His Oliver Queen ID gets him in and out of Russia, which gets him a slow boat to Alaska that gets him to his Canadian cabin long enough to lose the worst of the fish smell and resupply.

Then he’s pushing on, heading for Manhattan and the only place he thinks he might find Natasha, the only after-SHIELD strategy that might apply.

.

She isn’t waiting for him when he gets off the elevator at the top of Stark Tower but it’s close enough that she might as well be. The look she gives him feels as hot and intense as a hug, more personal than they ever let themselves get when they’ve got anything like spectators who might know them. On account of the lingering fish smell, he’s not expecting contact but the way she looks at him is close enough.

Natasha’s bristling with the need to give him all the intel Madripoor didn’t have, including details he isn’t sure he wants. The only thing he needs to hear is that Nick Fury’s alive, that SHIELD for all intents and purposes isn’t gone, it’s just temporarily operating at a disadvantage, rebranding itself to cut its losses.

“Thought I’d find you playing beach bum,” she says quietly once they’re close enough for privacy, a non-joke to cover how deep she’s trying to read him.

“But we’re not retired,” he points out mildly, shrugs a little because he’s never been that opaque to her, and the sheer relief washing over her says more than public declarations ever could about their future.

 

 

~ f ~ 


End file.
